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Bryan Stumpf's China Journal |
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Good-Bye,
Shanghai And so we’ve reached the end of the journey. My flight for Seattle leaves in 12 hours. Tomorrow will be the longest day of my life, literally. I’ll be stuck in Monday, August 16th for about 40 hours. I am always impressed by modern transportation. I remember at one point in my life being amazed that I could be sitting in a classroom in SUNY Plattsburgh in the morning, and then be eating cookies in my mom’s kitchen in Cape Vincent, NY by afternoon. By tomorrow evening, I’ll have a new paradox to contemplate – “On Monday morning, I was sipping green tea in Shanghai; by Monday afternoon, I was sipping Starbucks in Seattle.” With only a short time left in Shanghai, I wanted to share a few last thoughts about living in China for 5 months. In these past 5 months, I’ve been to (in chronological order) Hangzhou, Beijing, Zhou Zhuang, Suzhou, Hong Kong, Yandang Mountain, Xi’an, Yellow Mountain, the Yangtze River, and Tibet. I’ve seen so many incredible sights - the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City, and the Terracotta Warriors, to name a few. Not to mention I taught 10 weeks of classes at China’s prestigious Jiao Tong University. And now it’s back to my humdrum life in the states. I remember returning from England after living there for 4 months. As I met up with family and friends, they all asked one question first: “How was it?” I really didn’t know how to answer this question. My immediate reply was usually, “It was great.” Then, my mind would dart in dozens of different directions, trying to think of a follow-up. I just didn’t know where to begin. I’d think to myself, “Should I tell them about that one time…or should I tell them about that other time…?” I’d always have a difficult time focusing on one story or one starting point. There was just too much material to cover. That’s why I have been so dedicated to writing this China journal – and to sending it out to all of you. I wanted you to take the journey with me. Actually, with every journal, I spared you from the extended Director’s Cut version. Before mailing out each journal, I always tried to strip it down to the bare essentials. My backlog of journal material looks like the manuscript of “War and Peace.” I couldn’t help it. When placed in a new environment, all of your senses are heightened – and I wanted to record every little detail. When I look back at the journals from my first few weeks in Shanghai, I’m almost ashamed of my seemingly constant criticism towards China, Chinese people, and Chinese culture. But then again, I only wrote it how I saw it. During that time, I was also reading the book “River Town” by the American author Peter Hessler. In the book, Hessler talks about his life as a teacher in China for two years. I learned a lot from Hessler. Not just from his experiences in China, but also the evolution of his perspective towards Chinese culture. He makes it clear that no matter how intelligent or “culturally aware” people might consider themselves, it’s always a long road from culture shock to acceptance. When you are immersed in a foreign culture, there’s no way you can force yourself to the point of acceptance. So I cannot apologize for any observations in my journals that might be perceived as culturally biased - if I didn’t find something culturally significant when I first saw it, I wasn’t going to lie in my journal saying that it was. And it would be disingenuous to revise my March observations with my August perspective. Most importantly, my perspective on China has dramatically changed within the span of 5 months. I’ve been an ardent observer for the whole 5 months and I’ve recorded my observations. Every time I read through my journal, I learn something new about myself. And I also learn a lot about America, China, and the world. As I pack for my flight tomorrow, the clothes I brought with me from America seem to belong to a different person. They were clothes that I packed on a cold Seattle night in March. Now they look totally out of place on the warm Shanghai days of August. I decided to give some of my clothes away to friends in China. It felt like shedding old skin. As a pack things up and give things away, I keep on reflecting on how Americans have so much they take for granted. Yaping has often described Shanghai circa 1990. There was not a single McDonald’s or KFC. In fact, there really weren’t many restaurants at all. As Yaping describes it, the country wasn’t rich enough for people to go out and eat like they do now. People had to prepare their own food. And during this time, many had to resort to making their own clothes. Knitting clothes was more common than buying clothes. Even in modern day China, most of the population would not be able to acquire the status symbols that most Americans take for granted. For example, only about 14% of college-age children ever make it to college or vocational school. And many Chinese never learn to drive - only a small percentage will ever own a car. But the Chinese never indulge in self-pity. On the contrary, they are a nation hungry for modern growth. China is a developing country, a society in transition. I can honestly say that every day I’m in Shanghai, I reflect on what a rare and amazing opportunity it is to live here - I’m seeing Shanghai at a time of rebirth. Shanghai is a city steeped in construction. The streets smell of wet cement. Jackhammers and earth-moving machines can be heard on every street. It seems everywhere you turn, there’s the familiar 10-foot tall, blue aluminum siding along the sidewalk, marking off another construction zone. Also, every street seems to have a concrete structure wrapped in green netting and outfitted in bamboo scaffolding, indicating a building in mid-construction. At night, you often see blue flashes from a welder’s arc glancing off the facades of buildings surrounding a construction site, in a kind of strobe-light effect. Who knows when I’ll be able to visit Shanghai again? One thing I do know - I’m in the city at a unique moment in its long history. The very face of Shanghai is changing drastically, and daily. But being in China has also made me more reflective about being an American. I’ve a renewed appreciation for my American rights, privileges and freedoms. For example, in China, if you criticize the President of China in a public forum, you will be labeled anti-Chinese and unpatriotic, and risk being arrested. Whereas in America, with the rights guaranteed to all American citizens, anyone can make critical comments of the president without the fear of being called anti-American or unpatriotic. Such freedom of expression is rare in this world - it should be appreciated by more Americans. And I’ve also gained more pride in my right to vote. When I spoke with Yaping’s government class at Jiao Tong, I was embarrassed when one of the Chinese students asked, “If every American has the right to vote for President, why is there such a low voter turnout?” This is how non-democratic countries see the U. S - America is supposed to be this shining beacon of democracy, yet so few Americans perform the most basic function of democracy. So PLEASE VOTE – we should prove to other countries that democracy really is appreciated by all Americans. Most importantly, once you get outside of United States for a while, you get more of a sense of a global community. Unfortunately, it seems Americans often think of themselves as being on some island, isolated from their global neighbors. I feel we need to be more interconnected with the rest of the world. I’m proud that the U.S. seeks out open communication with other countries, but it seems we should do less talking, and more listening. I have to admit I am a bit anxious about returning to my old life in America. When I returned from living 4 months in England, it took me a long time to acclimate to American life. Life slowed down and I was reacquainted with tedium. Even though I felt I had changed a lot, it seemed no one else had. But then again, everything had changed. Friends seemed slightly different; old hang outs seemed slightly different. It was almost like I had assumed, or hoped, that America would remain in suspended animation while I was gone. But I soon realized that life had continued on the other side of the planet, and I had missed it. Due to my correspondences with all of you, I think returning from Shanghai will be less difficult. I want to thank all of you for keeping in touch with me during my stay in Shanghai. And I also want to thank everyone for your supportive comments about my journal writing. As I said before, I never planned on mailing out my journal entries. I only planned to send a few journals during my first few weeks - just to let you know I was still alive and safe in Shanghai. Almost every one of you has sent me an e-mail encouraging to keep sending journals. Knowing that I had an audience for the journals kept me diligent. I don’t think I would have put together such a focused journal if it hadn’t been for your support and encouragement. I look forward to seeing you all in person. Of course, leaving Yaping will be difficult. We have been inseparable since I stepped off my plane on the night of March 24th - inseparable mostly because I’ve remained so dependent on her for everything. She’s been a translator, a teacher, a traveling partner, a true friend, and a guardian angel. I dread the moment we say “good-bye” tomorrow. This last week in Shanghai has been an emotional roller coaster. One moment I’ll be looking forward to being home and the next moment I’ll be sadly saying “good-bye” to a Chinese friend, student, or colleague. On Thursday, I had a last dinner with some of my students. We ate at the Faculty Club on Jiao Tong’s campus, the first place that Yaping took me when I arrived in China. On Friday, I met with my Jiao Tong colleagues, He Yan, Xiaohong and Xiaoling, for the last time. I promised them all I would see them again. I hope I can stay true to my promise. I’ve also taken the time to visit all my old haunts in Shanghai. I visited Little Happy, Cheap and Crown Plaza one last time. And I also took a stroll through my old neighborhood, just to check out my old apartment. Thinking back to the days I lived in that corner of Shanghai - it seems like a different life. And though I enjoyed staying in Yaping’s apartment, I sometimes miss my balcony in the old apartment. I could see clear to the Huangpu River and the Lupu Bridge. It’s too bad the next teacher from Highline won’t have the chance to gaze from the same balcony. Jiao Tong decided the apartment's rent was too high - they’ll be housing the next Highliner on the campus. I was the last Highline instructor to live in that apartment. And though I’ve seen so much of Shanghai, there was still so much I left unexplored. Just yesterday, I visited Century Park, the biggest park in Shanghai. The park was a complete surprise - I thought I’d never see a park so large in Shanghai. In an earlier journal, I claimed the city’s parks were too small, they were “dabs of nature in a sprawl of concrete.” But Century Park, about the size New York’s Central Park, is a huge swathe of nature – walking through it makes you forget the city and its sprawling concrete. And so with only one day left in Shanghai, I had a whole new perspective to add to my Shanghai repertoire. In China, I’ve traveled to so many places, met so many different people, and grown from each experience, yet I’ve never lost sight of where I come from. When my plane landed in Shanghai from Tibet, an instrumental version of an old Journey song started playing in the cabin. It was a song that was popular when my friends and I were on the verge of adolescence in my hometown of Cape Vincent. It made me remember being a kid, full of hopes and dreams for the future. And it made me think about Cape Vincent – a small town, population around 3,000, right where Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River meet - a beautiful area, but considered by many to be just a summer residence. A large percentage of the year-round residents would be labeled by census reports and Gallup polls as “economically disadvantaged.” Yet here I am, a small town kid living in the fourth largest city in the world – on the other side of the globe from where I grew up. There’ve been moments when I’ll think to myself: How did this kid from Cape Vincent end up living in Shanghai? How did this kid from Cape Vincent end up on the Great Wall of China? How did this kid from Cape Vincent end up in Tibet? My childhood aspirations in Cape Vincent were the reason I journeyed to the other side of United States to work and live in Seattle. And those same aspirations are the reason I journeyed to the other side of the planet to work and live in Shanghai. From Cape Vincent to Shanghai – it’s been quite a journey.
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